The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The author of this review lives in the part of the world where robbers, rapists and psychopathic mass murderers , when political, economic and cultural circumstances align in that direction, may be given the status of national heroes and moral exemplars. One, however, can take some sort of comfort in the fact that this phenomenon isn’t limited to this area and that can be found even in seemingly more progressive and…

A revisionist western (or otherwise known as "post western") is a genre that has been sort of revived in later years (think True Grit, The Revenant a.o.). But of this modern stock one of them sort of stands out. It is not in the sense that the revision as such is any different in "The asssassination of Jesse James...", rather that it does not try to manipulate you into an ethical judgement during its runtime. Ususal…

*The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford*. When Andrew Dominik created his screenplay from Ron Hansen's novel of the same name, it appears he tried to match the flavor of the film with the title of the book. Bloated, awkward, pretentious and meandering. If you have been so sheltered that you have never heard of Jesse James, I will summarize his life in a nutshell. He was a ruthless killer and thie…

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford has a Shakespearean feeling to it. It shows Jesse James as a man fully aware of his limited time left to live due to his former actions as a criminal, robbing and murdering with his gang. Jesse James is aware of his mortality, and aware of the increasing chances of a gang member selling him out for a large reward as bounties arise with his name on them. The…